i've got a lover, a love like religion (i'm such a fool for sacrifice)
by funfanfin
Summary: One day, she hopes, they'll get to be together indefinitely. For now, she simply kisses him, and hopes they'll still be together tomorrow. OR: a Bellarke oneshot Hades/Persephone AU Soulmates AU Reincarnation AU


I.

The autumn air is crisp, leaving the taste of cinnamon on her tongue. The path is littered with vibrant leaves. Reds, yellows, oranges, it's a palette of warmth beneath her feet.

Halloween is next week, she remembers idly, breathing in the earthy breeze filtering through the slouched trees. The strap of her bag is digging into her shoulder, and she thumbs at it, frustrated. The bag is falling apart at the seams—literally—and the weight of three heavy textbooks aren't doing anything to help.

The bells from the campus tower chime their graceful tune, an elegant rendition of the school hymn that she could never quite remember the words to.

It's on the fourth chime that she sees him.

He's standing, looking up at the sky like he's waiting for a shooting star to streak brilliantly across it so he can make a wish. Only it's six in the afternoon, the sky is still a pale, slow blue. There's not a star in the sky, and there won't be for some time.

His hands are in his pockets, and there's a book bag slung over his shoulder and across his chest. Long, slender hands come up to adjust his clunky, black rimmed glasses.

Dark curls wave in the wind, youthful and playful and long. His hair reaches down to tickle the skin at his neck and his ears, and her stubborn artistic eye is drawn to the sharp line of his jaw. It juts out, like it was carved from ancient, precious stone.

It's him. Her soul recognizes him, swells with familiar feelings of longing at the sight of him.

She doesn't realize she's stopped walking until a bike whizzes past her, shattering through the eternal moment she unknowingly stepped into.

Blinking, she resumes walking, but its uneven, awkward. Her steps are unsure, like she doesn't quite remember how to put one foot in front of the other.

She tries not to look at him, but she can't help it. His presence is as loud as a whisper in a sacred hall. She can't help but notice the way his shoulders are tense, overburdened with the weight of the world. Even from here, she can see his freckles. She's never seen a night sky as perfectly composed as the one speckled across his cheekbones. The stars on his skin climb across the bridge of his nose, offering a soft contrast to the hardness in his eyes.

With each tentative step towards him, her ribs feel like they'll break under the threat of her exploding, bleeding heart. She can hear the Fates cackling in her mind, their deft fingers spinning and entwining wispy threads mercilessly.

Memories flash through her mind with every step she takes.

A meadow, soft and sweet as spring.

She takes another step.

A dark realm, the smell of cool, damp Earth. The tips of her fingertips sliding against cold, smooth walls.

Another step.

The jolting, wicked taste of pomegranates lingering on her lips, juice as dark and red as blood dripping down her raised chin.

Another step.

A curved, lazy smirk. The smooth, warm expanse of skin. Desperate kisses against the hollow of her throat.

Another step.

He turns, and meeting his eyes feels like a breath of relief. He blinks, drawing in a breath they find themselves taking in every single life, in every single world.

 _It's you._

It feels like a lifetime since they first met. In reality, it's been lifetimes. Looking at him now, at the familiar scar etched on his upper lip…

It feels like an eternity since the last time they were together.

Unafraid, she reaches up and brushes the hair from his eyes. She smiles softly, fingering the hinge of his glasses.

"These are new," she says, fond. Her hand drops down, cradling his cheek.

He leans into her touch, closing his eyes and remembering.

Remembering everything. Every touch, every kiss, every promise.

A lazy smirk (her favorite) stretches across his lips. He grabs her wrist and pulls her hand down, kissing her palm. His thumb is planted across her pulse, like he's making sure she's real.

"I missed you," he confesses, his low voice rumbling through her like a storm through a desert. "You have no idea how much I missed you."

"I think I have an idea," she says, voice breaking. She pulls him down, kissing him because there aren't words to describe the symphonies swelling in her chest.

It's getting harder, she can feel it. He can too, she's sure of it. Losing each other and finding each other and losing each other and finding each other again and again and again for countless years is taking its toll on the both of them.

She's sick of the years they're forced to spent apart, chasing each other like the moon chases the sun and the sun chases the moon. She wishes she could just stay with him always, in a world where the word goodbye doesn't exist yet.

But they live in this world, in a world where they speak the words _May we meet again_ like the plea that it is.

Sometimes, they get to be together for decades. Other times, for only a few years.

One day, she hopes, they'll get to be together indefinitely.

For now, she simply kisses him, and hopes they'll still be together tomorrow.

II.

In this life, her days are filled with flowers, because there are some passions that even death cannot extinguish.

Her shop is filled with colorful arrangements. They climb up the walls and fill the shelves, thirsty for water and eager for attention. Every time she hears the playful jingle of the door, she looks up and sees a customer inhale deeply, like they've never actually breathed fresh, flower-kissed air before.

It makes her smile every time, even though none of the customers that come through have the dark eyes and gruff voice that haunt her dreams.

It's easier to remember _him_ , in this life. The soft petals caress her smooth skin and she can't help but remember the way his gaze used to feel just as tender, just as sweet. The glorious array of smells reminds her of the meadow that she used to love, of her lighthearted, barefoot dances in misted flowers.

It's the innocence of flowers that captivate her. She wonders if that's because she knows that same purity does not exist within her, no matter how much she wants to believe it does.

The roots, however, they yearn for darkness. They stretch and uncurl and reach desperately towards the Underworld, finding strength in isolation and familiarity in death.

Perhaps it's not the innocence that attracts her to flowers after all.

In any case, her arms are covered in angry red scratches from thorns and dirt is burrowed stubbornly underneath her fingernails and she can't get enough of the feeling of the earth in her hands.

One day in late spring, a sweet, warm breeze dances its way into her shop along with news of a cemetery opening up on the other side of town.

It's not long before the owner emails her. He wants to meet with her to discuss the possibility of a business partnership between her flower shop and the cemetery.

At first, she hesitates. Her fingers hover over her keyboard, trembling slightly. _It could be him_ , her heart whispers hopefully, and she ends up agreeing to visit the cemetery to meet with him.

She wears a dress the color of deep blue orchids and braids her hair into a crown around her head. It's been lifetimes since she's been the queen of anything, but she knows better than anyone that old habits die hard.

She wanders around the cemetery, stepping carefully around the few graves that dot the land. Their inscriptions are short, sweet, melancholic.

The owner of the cemetery comes to greet her with an empty smile and a frigid handshake and she swallows her disappointment gracefully. It's not him. This man is the opposite of the person she's searching for. This man is calloused towards death, only interested in numbers and contracts and financial opportunity.

Five minutes. She speaks to him for five minutes before declining his offer, gripping the edges of her dress so tightly the fabric wrinkles. The disappointment in her chest turns to a sorrow-fed loneliness, and she fights angry, bitter tears as she walks across the well-tended grass.

"Excuse me," a voice says, low and familiar. "I think you dropped this."

She turns, tears forgotten halfway down her cheeks, and sees _him_.

There's a boyish smile stretched across his face. His warm skin is dotted with more freckles than usual, she notices. It's obvious that, in this life, he's spent plenty of time underneath the hot, unforgiving sun. He's standing next to a lawn mower, a box of gardening tools strapped to the side of it. He's holding a book out to her.

Letting out a breath, she steps toward him, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from grinning.

"I didn't drop anything," she says, voice small, tentative, hopeful. He holds the book closer to her, and she takes it, her fingers brushing against his and igniting her skin.

Through blurred vision, she looks down at the book.

It's an ancient, obviously loved copy. The cover is ripped and worn, but she can just make out the title.

 _The Greek Myths_

She turns to a page whose corner has been carefully dog eared. Beautiful illustrations drape the page of a meadow, a dark throne, six pomegranate seeds held up to curved pink lips.

 _Persephone (Kore) the Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld_

Tucked between the pages is a flower that has been pressed over time. With shaking fingers, she lifts the flower out of the book.

It's a forget-me-not.

She lets out a relieved, surprised laugh and throws herself at him in a hug so forceful it makes him stagger backwards. It's not long before he wraps his arms around her and nuzzles her neck.

"Of course," she laughs. "Of course you would be the groundskeeper of the cemetery."

She can feel him smiling against her skin.

"I thought it was fitting," he says, soft.

"I'm a florist," she says, feeling him shake with quiet laughter. "I thought it was fitting."

She pulls back slightly, to see his eyes. They're as dark and endless as she remembered, and looking into them feels like coming home. He kisses her before she can tell him that in this life, she's adopted a three-legged dog and named him Cerberus.

III.

In this life, her crown is made of bloodied bones and she embraces death like it's an old friend. In some ways, it is.

Here, her name is synonymous with terror and violence. Water tastes like blood and half the words that spill from her mouth are echoing lies.

 _I did what I had to do._

Her eyes are bluer in this life, it seems, more tumultuous and telling. She is a storm encased in a girl's body, hell bent on destroying the world until there's nothing left to rule but the ashes of the dead.

She engulfs the ones she loves, sentencing them to death by daring to deem them precious, by marking them as special.

Her father. Wells. Finn. Lexa. Countless individuals that she can't even name because their deaths were a necessary sacrifice in an eternal war whose bloodshed and death count would have impressed even Ares.

In this life, she is too caught up in a whirlwind of mortality to remember her immortality. She holds responsibilities so heavy that Atlas would have thanked the gods he carried the world on his shoulders instead of the burden on hers.

The only relief she's found is in a person whose responsibilities are as heavy as her own, whose darkness is as consuming as her own, whose demons are as familiar as her own. He is a temple of peace in a land of destruction and she would sacrifice herself if it meant keeping him alive.

Scars adorn his body, spelling the names of those who have tasted death by his hand. He walks like the dead are following him, whispering to him over his shoulder, dragging him down with piercing, demanding fingers.

Despite it all, she thinks she sees peace in the galaxies dotted across his skin and she swears she hears it in the low timbre of his voice.

In this life, she leaves him for months, because the Fates are fond of familiar patterns in their weaved thread.

In this life, she returns, only to realize that they are both more broken than they were before.

In this life, she loves him before she knows she does.

Their people are running, running from a foe that has no Achilles' heel. They reach the sea, growing thirsty at the sight of water they cannot drink, and decide to cross it in hopes of life on the other side. The violent, angry fog is reaching its deadly tendrils across the land, and this beach could very well be the next to be consumed by it.

He's colored with self-loathing, so it isn't a surprise when he she finds him one night, staring at the sea like it's the last thing he'll ever see. It's on this night, under the cold, cruel glare of countless stars, that he tells her that he doesn't deserve to take a seat on the boats that will take them to a promised land.

Angry, hot tears escape her without her permission and she pleads with him to not do this. She pleads for his life but he's already decided on his sentence.

"I won't leave you," she says, firm and unrelenting,

"You've done it before," he says, soft. "What makes this any different?"

"I—" the words are caught in her throat because it's in this moment that she realizes she loves him. It's fitting, she supposes. She loves him and he's going to die anyway. "Bellamy, don't do this. _Please_. It's not worth the risk. _You're_ not worth the risk."

He just smiles at her, peaceful, and it strikes a fear so deep in her heart that her skin erupts in chills. He wants to die, she realizes. He just wants to save one more life before he does.

The sob that escapes her is enough to make him wrap his arm around her. She curls herself into his chest and soaks his shirt with tears as salty as the cool ocean breeze. He pulls her close, presses a kiss to her temple, and lets her mourn for him.

Between wracking, chest-heaving sighs, she hears his own sobbing, his own heavy-hearted shuddering.

They cry themselves into a sleep so deep that dreams don't dare touch them.

When she wakes, her head is pounding and her eyes are aching dully from a night of tears. The world is rocking back and forth around her, and she scrambles to her feet. Gathering her surroundings, she realizes she's below deck on one of the ships.

Fruitless prayers leave her lips along with curses as she climbs up wobbling, creaking wooden stairs. The sun pierces her eyes and she shields them with a hand, looking through the flurry of people for a head of dark curls.

Finding Luna, she yanks her around to face her.

"Where the hell is Bellamy?" she demands, desperate.

The look on Luna's face is the only answer she needs.

"Clarke—"

It's too late. Clarke has already marched herself halfway across the ship to the small row boat hanging from the side. She barks orders to no one in particular, yanking on the sea-soaked ropes with all her might.

"Help me lower the boat!" she pleads, but she's met with blank stares and dismissive gestures. " _Now_!"

In the end, two Floukru take pity on her, helping her lower the boat. The boat lands with a definitive splash, and people gather in a crowd of commotion.

"Clarke!" Abby yells, pushing herself towards the front of the crowd. "What do you think you're doing?!"

She pulls out of her mother's grasp.

"I have to go back for him," she says, pained. "Mom, please, I have to go back."

"You have to go back for who, Clarke?"

"For _him_ ," she cries. "For _Bellamy_. He stayed behind and I have to go back—"

Abby catches Luna's eye. "You didn't tell her," she asks, but it isn't really a question.

Luna purses her lips. "She did not give me a chance to."

"Didn't tell me what?!"

"Clarke," Abby starts, careful, "Bellamy's below deck."

"What?"

"We knew he was going to try and stay behind. And if he stayed behind, we knew you were going to stay behind. We…honey, we drugged him. It was the only—"

Clarke pushes her way through the crowd and flies down the steps below deck. She smells the familiar scent of antiseptic and finds a room set apart for medical purposes. There are three empty cots, and one occupied one.

A familiar mess of curly dark hair meets her. She feels her heart twitch and a sigh of relief escapes her. Rushing over to his side, she brushes hair from his eyes. She presses a kiss to his forehead.

He stirs, and she grabs his hand. His eyes flutter open and he looks around, confused. When he realizes where he is, he sits up, quickly, holding his head.

"No," he breathes, realizing where he is, knowing that the reality of his presence here confirms the fact that someone else stayed behind. Someone's father, mother, sister, brother, child. Someone innocent is sitting on the sand of that lonely beach, waiting for an inevitable death because someone believed his life was worth more than theirs. _"No._ "

"It's okay," she cries. "You're okay."

"I—I don't deserve to—"

" _Shh_ ," she pushes him back down, gently.

" _No_ ," he whimpers weakly, and her heart aches. "Clarke—"

"I know," she smooths her thumb over his hand. "I know."

Another name, she thinks. Another name to scratch into his conscience.

She's let others die to keep him alive before, and her gratitude is stronger than her guilt every time. She learns later that it was Luna, Kane, and Abby's decision to drug him, and Clarke is grateful that for once, the heaviness of that choice was not forced upon her head.

It takes Bellamy nearly a week to come to terms with the fact that he's on the ship. He refuses to speak to Luna and hardly speaks even to Clarke, choosing instead to stare at the eternal horizon blankly. She knows he's thinking about the person he could have saved by staying behind.

She finds him one warm night on the deck, staring at the explosion of stars reflected in the still, sleeping ocean.

"They told me you thought I stayed behind," he says after a while, quiet. The low sound of the water lapping the sides of the ship calms them, soothes them. "They said you were ready to take a boat and go back for me."

She stands beside him, her shoulder brushing with his.

Resting her elbows on the side of the boat, she looks over at him.

"Yeah," she confirms, tight.

"Why?" he asks, furrowing his brows like he can't comprehend anyone caring about him enough to do something like that.

Tentatively, she grabs his hand, weaving her fingers between his own.

"I think you know why," she says, her voice a shaky, half-whisper.

He swallows, looking down at her. The starlight shines off his face, moonlight softening his sharp features.

"Because you need me?"

"Because I _love_ you."

The words flow from her mouth like a melody, and she's surprised to find that it's a song she's heard before.

She remembers the first time he ever spoke those words to him, and she remembers every single time since then. She remembers the six pomegranate seeds, how they licked at her palm and begged to be tasted. She remembers running her thumb down the valley of his spine and pressing soft kisses across the fine lines of his shoulder blades.

He staggers a little, and she knows he must be remembering, too.

They blink at each other, like they can't quite believe what they are remembering. It makes sense to them now, why they, of all people, are tasked with such heavy burdens. It makes sense to them why they are rulers of such tragedy, such loss.

It makes her want to laugh, strangely enough. Another cruel joke by the Fates, sentencing them to a life where they are once again the King and Queen of Death.

Before he can speak, she kisses him until she tastes the sea, her tears mingling with the sweat on his skin and leaving her wanting. He cradles her face with a hand, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. She can feel the same longing ache in the way his other hand grips her hip, his fingers curling into the skin underneath her shirt. His kiss tastes like heartbreak and healing and home.

They've never had to speak to communicate, not in past lives and not in this one, and the way she rises up against him when he presses adoring kisses down her throat is the only prompting he needs.

Bellamy takes her hand and guides her below deck, and she follows him down into the darkness with ease. She's done it before, after all. Still, the eagerness that ignites in her veins is fiercer than it's ever been, coaxed to life by his dark gaze.

They find an empty room and spend the night there loving each other. There are soft kisses, rough kisses, kisses that drown them in a euphoria that seems to be everlasting, that could be eternal.

Here, they make art with their tongues and music with their moans and they never stop to wonder if they made a mistake; they can see their fates written in the constellations of the freckles that climb across the bridge of his nose, they can see their destiny marked in the lines of her hands.

They love and love and love until their muscles ache with it and their hearts burst with it and their minds are consumed by it.

In between flares of ecstasy, she hears him breathe her name against her throat and she shudders with pleasure.

" _Persephone_ ," he tastes the ancient name on her tongue, tastes it on her skin. " _I love you_."

She kisses him, soft and tender, nipping at his bottom lip enough to make him groan. She draws back to look at him, taking a second to trace his freckles. She knows them by heart, but tracing their patterns has always been one of her favorite things to do.

" _Hades_ ," she whispers, reverent and fond. A sigh escapes her. "Will we ever find peace?"

She waits for him to say what's she's thinking.

 _We don't deserve to find peace._

Instead, he presses a kiss against her palm. The gesture is intimate to them, and her eyelashes flutter shut.

"Maybe someday," he says against her skin, soft enough to make her heart swell with dangerous hope.

For now, though, they are Bellamy and Clarke, and they live in a world where peace is nothing but an idea, a dream.

IV.

They flip through the years like they are written in pages of an endless book.

Though their bodies are young and new, they feel old, sickly on the inside, contaminated with darkness and hate and loneliness. Lifetimes pass where they only find solace in the other's existence for minutes, for hours, for days. Centuries go by and it takes longer and longer to find the other.

At last, even the Fates grow tired of their game.

At Zeus' command, the two of them are finally allowed to return home, to their realm of the dead deep within the Earth.

The relief is intoxicating.

The world below has remained unchanged, but their first steps on the cold, smooth floors are tentative, cautious.

It isn't long, however, before they run through the long, wide halls with relieved, easy laughter and light hearts. Her dark dress flutters around her when he spins her and she catches a glimpse of the night sky between the folds of the fabric.

They know they shouldn't feel so happy in this place of death but there's a certain, specific familiarity in these forgotten columns that they can't help but find comfort in. The archaic designs carved into the walls tell the stories of the lives they've lived and they trace the sharp stones with awe, firelight dancing in their eyes and soft smiles gracing their lips.

They spend decades making up for the years they were apart. They love each other slowly, without rush, because they know that finally, _finally_ , they are together.

They slip easily back into their roles as rulers of the Underworld. She sits on her throne, elevated and magnificent, ruthless and compassionate. He sits beside her, intimidating and bold, impulsive and selfless. Their fingers are intertwined between them and he strokes his thumb over her skin intimately.

She still leaves for months to bring spring to the world and to visit her mother, but the dull aching in her chest is filled with his name and they never quite get used to leaving each other.

An eternity passes.

And then another.

And another.

Years turn into decades and decades into centuries and while one civilization crumbles into dust, another rises from its ashes and they marvel at the harmonious rhythm of life and death. It gives and takes, rises and falls. It amazes them how while the world swirls in and out of chaos, their love remains untouched.

"You're my constant," he tells her one day, thoughtful and serious. They are laying side-by-side in the middle of a kaleidoscopic field of flowers he had asked Chloris to grow specifically for her.

"I know," she smiles, picking a forget-me-not and using it to blot out the sun. "And you're mine."

He huffs a laugh, leaning over to press a kiss against her forehead and placing the small, five petaled, sky blue flower behind her ear.

They've lived as peasants, royalty, exiles, pirates, students, painters, writers, actors, doctors and everything in between. They've lived lives where they love others, marry others, have children with others, only to find each other somewhere in the middle of an already built life. There were lives where they were together for mere minutes, and others where they were lucky enough to be together for years. They've seen each other as carefree children and as struggling teenagers and as tired adults and as greying elders.

And in every life, in every existence, in every world, their souls longed to find each other, to love each other. Their paths always crossed, even if only for a brief eclipse of time.

He is her constant, and she is his, and they have always found their way back to each other.

Now, on rare, quiet days, they lay in bed and find an easy, sweet, gentle solace in each other's arms. Flowers line their chambers and they smile at the sound of Cerberus' low snoring echoing through their halls.

His fingers stroke the spines of books and she thumbs the dimple in his chin and they dare to believe that, at last, they have found peace.

Together.

* * *

A/N-*aggressively ignores my multiple unfinished/unupdated WIPs*

this idea got stuck in my head and refused to let!me!live! until i wrote it. I'm just a sucker for the hades/persephone relationship (the interpretation of their relationship where persephone !chooses! to live with hades in the underworld) and bellamy/clarke finding each other in every universe just ruins me (North Star™)

if you liked this, i woul to hear your thoughts. Comments are like Werther's Originals. They're the best and nothing else compares to the sweet caramel taste and memories of grandma's house. except for i don't have a lot of memories with my grandparents but THAT'S BESIDES THE POINT OK LEAVE ME A COMMENT AND I'LL LOVE YO (just like bellamy and clarke will love each other forever amiright)

unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine


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